Ariana Reines's A Sand Book is a collection of prose poetry that uses innovative and captivating poetic language to explore the subjective experience of womanhood, spirituality, and love. Throughout the text, Reines investigates inner psychological states and existential questions, offering unique takes and perspectival insights on the experience of being alive.
A Sand Book begins with a series of poems that deal with messianic symbolism, the notion of getting lost, and the concept of silence. Reines explores the idea of the self as autonomous and separate from oppressive systems, boldly declaring “there is a hell of a lot of nothing that wants to make me something” (1). These earliest poems also explore ideas of female identity in relation to structural systems. Throughout, Reines undertakes an act of reclamation, where she confronts the various levels of oppression, discrimination, and destruction inflicted by those structures, daring to “take the eye of the storm and fill the cup of my blood with wine” (2).
Reines further examines themes of loss and intimacy in the later poems of the book. In “Song of the Body,” she writes of her physical relation to the earth and the idea of losing oneself to be found. The poem also explores the notion of being both simultaneously intimate and distant from a lover. She writes, “the words I say to you/ and the things I cannot say are deeper still/ pressed against each other like leaves of paper in a book” (3). In “Virgin Mary,” Reines taps into an intimate spiritual ideal, which she sees as a symbol of her own interiority. In describing the image of the Virgin Mary, she writes, “she stands in the dark room of my soul/ all silent, all perfect, only to be imagined” (4).
Reines also touches upon the idea of mortality and its relation to material possessions. She writes, “as we are nothing, who can own us but dust?” (5). She further reflects on the idea of destruction and loss in “The Loss of Heaven and the Presence of Hell” and “A Hole too Wide.” In these poems, she writes of the emptiness of human mortality and suggests that one must accept it in order to truly understand their place in the world.
The poems of A Sand Book provide a vivid and unique emotional journey. Reines masterfully captures the complexity of emotion, and her technical skill as a writer allows her to provide an intimate window into the psychological states of being a woman, a lover, and a seeker of spiritual understanding. With her expertly crafted language and captivating imagery, Reines asks us to confront our mortality, explore our relationship to the world and those around us, and reexamine our sense of identity. A Sand Book is an outstanding and powerful collection of poems, offering unique takes and perspectival insights on the experience of being alive.
Works Cited
1. Reines, Ariana. A Sand Book. Tin House, 2019.
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
